maybe I should just skip out on getting the right size and get ALL THE SIZES

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I don't know why it defaulted to my hometown

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the good news is that my local home depot seems to have some in stock, if I can just figure out what size I need the bad news is that my "local" home depot is 2,577 mi (4147 km) away as the cow flies

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but good job taking this as an opportunity to make fun of how easy these are to lose. guess what: that's exactly why I need more of them

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this was just a question because I couldn't remember them. I think I was thinking of "c-clamps" which is close but not right, and it's too close to the actual name (c-clips/e-clips) to make sense

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What do you call these little clamps that fit over a groove in a rod to keep it in place?

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foone

@Foone

4h

It's not perfect but it certainly is a hell of a lot better.

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I'm not saying I have been rubbing too hard on this laptop But my thermal camera is.

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maybe while I've got it out, I can do some cleanup on this laptop

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yep, we're good.

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okay put it back together and added some alignment marks on the case. let's see if it'll work non-naked now

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okay dual-CF card mode doesn't seem to work. It can't see the secondary card. Probably Toshiba didn't bother wiring up those pins, because... there's not physically room to stuff two 2.5" drives in this system?

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and it boots!

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We've got glowies!

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okay with the case off, I can confirm it's definitely aligned properly now. Let's insert the CF card and try turning it on again.

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nope, doesn't seem to be. let's try some NAKED ALIGNMENT

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and... no power on. god damn it did I fuck up and get the wrong pin:?

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This may be even more annoying than the tiny adapters to fit into the drive bay! it's just about as hard to position correctly, plus it's too big to really see what you're aiming at. But I managed with some sharpie to add an aiming guide

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also I wasn't bothered at first by how obviously off-center the CF card slot was but now that I've seen it, I can't NOT see it.

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CHOP

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so the pin I need to remove is RIGHT HERE

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which means it's upside-down according to this pinout

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okay so putting my meter in continuity mode, it says these two pins are commoned together.

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The PCB calls itself IDE2CF-E4(090325). March 25th 2009?

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that's hooked into the only major component on this thing, U1. It's an LD1117AG-33A, which is a low-drop fixed voltage regulator, producing 3.3v. And it's hard-wired with that jumper to never be active. Weird.

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there's some hard to read text here, but it says this J2 is for the CF voltage. 1-2 is 5v, and 3-4 is 3.3v. it's got a jumper soldered on 1-2, so it only does 5v.

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and the bottom. it's pretty directly wired, no components here

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that's not completely as silly as it sounds, the case is actually slightly transparent.

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oh look it has a small pile of internal LEDs, in the normal 3-2-1-4 order

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it's got screws so obviously I'm gonna open it up

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So this is my dual compact flash to 44-pin IDE adapter. This one: amazon.com/Syba-Compact-A

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here's two other CF to 44-pin IDE adapters. Yep. Key pin.

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Hey, boss? aint 44pin IDE supposed to have a key pin?

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and even then, given enough time and interest, people like

@johndmcmaster

will decap the die using acid and then take pictures of the surface itself and then people will reverse engineer and then emulate it.

Quote Tweet

John McMaster

@johndmcmaster

· May 22

Bought 30+ USB serial converters. They claim PL2303 core and the case molding is very sturdy...but can we verify what's actually inside?

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honestly your best bet for making an "uncopyable" program would be to produce your own hardware, so that the program and the CPU are on one blobbed die.

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because fundamentally a computer is a machine that executes instructions. and you can't stop them from changing what instructions it runs, so that it runs a set of instructions that are equivalent EXCEPT for your copy-protection test.

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and yes, these increasingly make it harder to copy software... but not impossible. it's never impossible. it can't be.

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they'll find a way to spoof those keys or they'll hack the OS or they'll build hardware to install into the computer to disable the signature check.

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and if you lock down the computer so much that only licensed software can run, from licensed companies, and signed by your own keys... (you know, like consoles)

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